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Code and language: Difference between revisions
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Computer language (for ease of discussion let's call this “code”) differs from ordinary human languages (let’s can these “languages”) in that it has no concept of ''tense''. It can still record and transmit past and future states, but it does so by rendering them in the present. | Computer language (for ease of discussion let's call this “code”) differs from ordinary human languages (let’s can these “languages”) in that it has no concept of ''tense''. It can still record and transmit past and future states, but it does so by rendering them in the present. | ||
The present tense is different from the past or the future because it addresses an infinitesimal instant having no duration in time. A given object in the present tense there cannot contradict itself. It can only have one state. | The present tense is different from the past or the future because it addresses an infinitesimal instant having no duration in time. A given object in the present tense there cannot contradict itself. It can only have one state. | ||
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But Switch A is an “it”. A past, present and a future. It has a history. <br> | But Switch A is an “it”. A past, present and a future. It has a history. <br> | ||
In computer code, A is simply a common property of existing fields A(T1) to A(Tn). <br> | In computer code, A is simply a common property of existing fields A(T1) to A(Tn). <br> | ||
Both approaches capture the same “external data” - there is no degradation involved in either method - but a language applies a | Both approaches capture the same “external data” - there is no degradation involved in either method - but a language applies a {{t|metaphor}}ical overlay which designates given fields having a common feature as an integral object having a causal history. This history is a causal chain running through the “object”. Thus, unless something intervenes to change it, Switch A’s status at T+n will be the same as its state was at T. There is an equivalent causal chain operating on interactions between discrete integral objects. <br> | ||
By contrast machine code does sees only a correlation between states, and not a causal chain. <br> | By contrast machine code does sees only a correlation between states, and not a causal chain. <br> | ||
It was the great Scottish philosopher David Hume who first observed that the very idea of causality is an explaining fiction that we lay over the raw data of our observations to organise and make sense of them. <br> | It was the great Scottish philosopher David Hume who first observed that the very idea of causality is an explaining fiction that we lay over the raw data of our observations to organise and make sense of them. <br> | ||
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So far we've been talking about a single on/off switch - in any complex system (whether a computer, a machine, a cell, a molecule, or an atom), the simplest possible unit. 1 or 0; existence or non existence. One cannot further reduce. Even here we find, when we are using a natural language, ambiguity. <br> | So far we've been talking about a single on/off switch - in any complex system (whether a computer, a machine, a cell, a molecule, or an atom), the simplest possible unit. 1 or 0; existence or non existence. One cannot further reduce. Even here we find, when we are using a natural language, ambiguity. <br> | ||
The ambiguity, and the power of the history we create, is amplified if we group switches together. All complex systems (brains, organisms, societies, the Internet) are combinations of billions of switches. By selecting the switches that we wish to group together we can identify meta-objects to which we apply a history. Meta objects like “a bicycle” or “a program”, or “you” or “me”. <br> | The ambiguity, and the power of the history we create, is amplified if we group switches together. All complex systems (brains, organisms, societies, the Internet) are combinations of billions of switches. By selecting the switches that we wish to group together we can identify meta-objects to which we apply a history. Meta objects like “a bicycle” or “a program”, or “you” or “me”. <br> | ||
For exactly the same reason any such grouping is (or at one point in time was) an imaginative act: nothing in the underlying configuration of switches requires any grouping at all (we could operate like a code) let alone any particular grouping: the groupings we apply - many of which seem profound - evolved and layered on top of each other throughout the development of natural language. It is a way of organising sensory input to make sense of it. Call this “narratisation” (© {{author|Julian Jaynes}}) or coining a metaphor. <br> | For exactly the same reason any such grouping is (or at one point in time was) an imaginative act: nothing in the underlying configuration of switches requires any grouping at all (we could operate like a code) let alone any particular grouping: the groupings we apply - many of which seem profound - evolved and layered on top of each other throughout the development of natural language. It is a way of organising sensory input to make sense of it. Call this “narratisation” (© {{author|Julian Jaynes}}) or coining a {{t|metaphor}}. <br> | ||
The ability to narratise - the susceptibility of a language to metaphor implies ambiguity. <br> | The ability to narratise - the susceptibility of a language to metaphor implies ambiguity. <br> | ||
That history may be a kind of fiction: the ship of thebes will tend to be treated as a continuous object when, if you look at it as a collection of infinitesimal states, there is not one in common. <br> | That history may be a kind of fiction: the ship of thebes will tend to be treated as a continuous object when, if you look at it as a collection of infinitesimal states, there is not one in common. <br> | ||